Quotes About Judgment

Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don't have—in their portfolio.

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in light of the information available until that point

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty.

We favor the sensational and the extremely visible. This affects the way we judge heroes. There is little room in our consciousness for heroes who do not deliver visible results—or those heroes who focus on process rather than results.

The quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome.

A half-man (or, rather, half-person) is not someone who does not have an opinion, just someone who does not take risks for it.

It takes considerable effort to see facts (and remember them) while withholding judgment and resisting explanations. And

No, businessmen as risk takers are not subjected to the judgment of other businessmen, only to that of their personal accountant.

one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way).

People feel deep anxiety finding out that someone they thought was stupid is actually more intelligent than they are.

avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe.

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty. Much

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors—though never the same error more than once—is more reliable than someone who has never made any.

George Santayana: A man is morally free when Ã¢â'¬Â¦ he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung" goes the saying attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand (a vicious censor during the French revolution phase of terror), and a few others.

Rank beliefs not by their plausibility but by how much harm they might cause

understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit.

We laugh at others and we don't realize that someone will be just as justified in laughing at us on some not too remote day

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.

And as an essayist, I am not judged by other writers, book editors, and book reviewers, but by readers. Readers? Maybe, but wait a minute…not today's readers. Only those of tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. So, my only real judge being time, it is the stability and robustness of the readership (that is, future readers) that counts.

When you are employed, hence dependent on other people's judgment, looking busy can help you claim responsibility for the results in a random environment. The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results and one's role in them.

We expect places and products to be less attractive than in marketing brochures, but we never forgive humans for being worse than their first impressions

Being reviewed or assessed by others matters if and only if one is subjected to the judgment of future—not just present—others. And recall that, a free person does not need to win arguments—just win.*2

The policies we need to make decisions on should depend far more on the range of possible outcomes than on the expected final number. I